Festival season is here! With thousands of shows to choose from, the festival programmes can be overwhelming to navigate. As Scotland’s home for animated film, puppetry and visual theatre, we wanted to share a few ideas to get you started! Below is a small selection of shows that are on our radar this year; from dance and puppetry to clowning and animation, there’s something for everyone in this list. Have a great August!
Encased in a pickle jar, Ruxy uses exceptional clowning, puppetry, mask theatre, and movement to portray a plethora of characters, asking deep existential questions and offering ridiculous answers.
Part of the Made in Scotland Showcase and winner of Summerhall Arts’ Autopsy Award, Pickled Republic explores the tragi-comic journeys of vegetable characters including a pickled tomato and a potato-headed lounge singer. Fermenting somewhere between Eugène Ionesco absurdism and the smoky mystery of David Lynch, the show combines a perfect recipe of salt, silliness, dill, and dread.
through warm temperatures affirms castor oil’s legacy as a natural remedy, an elixir and a historic source that transcends boundaries. This performance takes you on a journey of reconnection with nature and the body. Weaving vocals and dance, the work shifts from meditative gestures to unfiltered expression building towards self-acceptance.
Mele Broomes’ choreography and vocals, with Simone Seales’ live cello and electronic soundscapes, merge as performers shift between solos, duos and collective movement. Part of the Made In Scotland Showcase.
Following more than 200 performances across the globe, Theatre Re, ‘one of the UK’s most admired physical theatre companies’ (The Scotsman), returns with its explosive and joyous five-star sell-out international hit about what is left when memory is gone.
Tom is living with early onset dementia. We meet him as he prepares for his 55th birthday party and past memories come flooding back.
‘Profoundly moving… an action-packed celebration of life’ BBC Radio 4
‘A moving and enthralling spectacle’ The Stage
A gloriously stupid show of bad animal impressions and a wildly playful nature safari. How do you do an Uglyface Scorpionfish? What’s a Darth Vader Giant Pill Millipede? Tom and Xavi create a wickedly feral duet between body, sound and species in this nature documentary on steroids.
Wild Thing! is a bittersweet meditation on life in an age of extinction. ***** (Stage). ‘Beautiful, contemplative… a remarkable and urgent show’ (Guardian on Vigil).
The odds of perishing in a commercial plane accident are 29.4 million to one. Reassuring. Except if you’re the one.
As emergency masks plummet, engines squeal and hand baggage flies from the overhead bins, two strangers hold hands. Scared and breathless, their lives flash past as they face their final moments together.
Exploring themes of luck and choice, fate and coincidence and above all what it means to connect with someone, this thrilling production, created by one of Scotland’s leading production companies.
Space Hippo is an award-winning science fiction comedy shadow puppetry show from Japan. It was created by Daniel Wishes and Seri Yanai. The two puppeteers use hundreds of colourful handmade shadow puppets cast onto a large screen with live voices and original music to create a cinematic live animated movie. The puppetry is operated in the front of the screen allowing the audience to see how everything is done. The story follows an ordinary hippopotamus who is sent on an epic adventure through the universe. She encounters strange new worlds, a food-dispensing robot and several mysterious alien species.
From the creators of 2023’s cult-hit CREEPY BOYS, SLUGS is a show about nothing. Join acclaimed clowns and theatremakers S.E. Grummett and Sam Kruger for a technocolour acid trip, meeting puppet Joni Mitchell, a two-person horse and every body part the duo have.
A techno-punk concert, a play, a clown show, a basement puppet nightmare all rolled into one, SLUGS is about trying to have a good time while the world burns.
Lachlan Werner: WonderTwunk By Impatient Productions and Ebdon Management
31st July to 24th August, Pleasance Dome
Lachlan Werner – ‘Hilarious. extraordinary ventriloquist’ (Guardian) – invites you to roll up and step this way for a new show so strong, it’s dangerous.
Jack Hammer is the strongest boy in the world. He can lift a ten tonne truck and crush the strongest steel. Just don’t get too close. His management says you can look, but you can’t touch.
Following his sell-out cult-hit horror debut, Voices Of Evil, Lachlan Werner welcomes you into a circus ring of stunts, sea-lions, sci-fi, secrets and minimal lip movement…
How do you say goodbye when words were never there? Arjun’s father never learnt to sign – now that he’s gone, Arjun must find his own way to honour him. Travel from the UK to India in Last Rites, a stunning fusion of visual storytelling, electrifying movement, and immersive sound that is accessible to Deaf, hard of hearing and hearing audiences.
Created by acclaimed theatremakers Ramesh Meyyappan (2024 Fringe Leading Light winner) and George Mann (Beautiful Evil Things, Translunar Paradise), Fringe favourites Ad Infinitum bring Last Rites part of the Here & Now Showcase.
A giant tries to capture the sun. A drowned princess seeks revenge on the ocean. Ten suns compete to light the Earth.
Huang Ruo, one of the most exciting figures of contemporary opera, reimagines ancient Chinese myths, first transcribed in the fourth century BC, through the lens of today’s environmental challenges. This 21st-century adaptation explores our complex relationship with the natural world, blending music, puppetry and mythology to reflect on humanity’s role as caretakers of the Earth.
Directed by Basil Twist, the Olivier Award-winning designer of My Neighbour Totoro, the performance features the Danish choir Ars Nova Copenhagen, joined by an exceptional ensemble of percussionists and puppeteers. With timeless myths of creation, water and elemental forces, Book of Mountains and Seas reminds us of the pressing need for a collective respect for nature.
Wael Shawky brings his singular vision to Talbot Rice Gallery, transforming its spaces with a striking solo exhibition. Known for his powerful explorations of identity, culture, and history, the Egyptian artist presents Drama 1882, an operatic film interrogating the 1882 Urabi revolution.
With evocative visuals and live performance, this work builds on his Cabaret Crusades, an epic video trilogy which unpicks colonial histories through myth and spectacle.
Alongside film, the exhibition showcases Shawky’s sculptures and drawings, reflecting his distinctive approach to storytelling.
Animation Shorts Various
Cameo, 16th August
Filmhouse, 19th August
Vue Omni, 19th and 20th August
TICKETS
The EIFF 2025 Animation Shorts programme features an exceptional selection of ten short films. Explore the infinite possibilities of animation with this global tour of a medium being used to tell a stunning variety of inventive, expressive, entirely unique tales.
This collection of shorts includes everything from a daring lunar adventure, to a family-friendly parable directed by Renée Zellweger, to a romance between a meatball and a tuna can. These stories, told through paint, pixels, and even pasta, reveal the enormous imagination and formal creativity found in modern animation.